Straplines: What’s the point?

It depends on your name, your offerings, your products & your services. Sometimes the name says it all ie: “Spit ‘n’ Polish Cleaning Services” doesn’t need much else, they’ve already said what they do in their name, while “Sparkle” would benefit from something like “Cleaning That Dazzles!”

In the second example, you don’t know whether they’re a cleaning service or a product, but that would be obvious from the setting, in a shop, you know it’s a product, on the uniform of someone cleaning an office, you can assume they’re not promoting the products they’re cleaning with.

A really good strap line can become more memorable than the company itself, sometimes evolving into the collective psyche to become a generic term that’s unforgettable, but at the same time you can’t remember which company created it. A few months ago I was driving behind a truck, I cannot remember what the company name was, but that doesn’t matter as I’m not their target audience, but I’ll never forget their strap line, plus I knew instantly what they did. It wasn’t a glamorous profession, they emptied sewage & portable toilets, but, the strap line was humorous, simple, direct, explanatory & above all unforgettable, want to know what it was…